Keeping Up In The Digital Age

The Digital Age means everything moves faster. Are you keeping up?

There are changing paradigms in the business world that are happening now. What the media has clumsily named "Web 2.0" is nothing more than the liberation of ideas and individuals.

The original Internet was all about "pages." We applied traditional business ideas to the new Internet frontier. We tried to abolish brick-and-mortar and learned the hard truth that consumers prefer Clicks-and-Mortar. But, the Internet also liberated everyone to publish their ideas online.

Everyone suddenly had a voice. Whether it's a website, a blog, a LinkedIn profile or a Facebook page, every person with access to a computer and the Internet has a voice.

You put your message in a bottle and you throw it into an ocean of bottles. With proper planning, you can make sure they find your online message when they search for it. And if they like what they see and read, they will stay.

Information is power. Knowledge is the Internet commodity. But there are half a million bozos online with some of the craziest ideas you could image, so credibility matters! You must provide valuable, useful and actionable information.

Just don't away so much they don't need your help at all. You must establish trust but don't give away all the business secrets. It's a tightrope but you have to walk it or you will lose.

Either the Internet has evolved or we have just discovered something new about this new business frontier. Whatever the case may be, the smart business will adapt to the change and will reap the benefits.